University of Virginia Library

HIS SELF-CRUSHING CRITICISM

IT ironically happens that Bernard Shaw as a critic has virtually made it impossible for those who accept his criticism to allow that Bernard Shaw as a dramatic author has any right to be really famous. We have seen that Bernard Shaw as a critic repeatedly fell into the grievous error of separating the stuff he was criticizing into manner and matter. Thus, confronted with the Elizabethan dramatists, Bernard Shaw always maintained that they had nothing to say and that they were tolerable only because they had an incomparably wonderful way of saying it. Comparing Shakspere with Ibsen, for example, he would point out that, if you paraphrased Ibsen's "Peer Gynt," it still remained good intellectual stuff, and that, if you paraphrased Shakspere's "Life's but a walking shadow," it became the merest commonplace. Bernard Shaw thence proceeded to draw the moral that Ibsen, apart from mere favor and prettiness, was the greater and more penetrating dramatist. Fortunately for Bernard Shaw, as we shall shortly realize, this criticism of his is not only false in fact, but it is also nonsense in theory. It is false in fact, because it is quite untrue that Shakspere paraphrased is commonplace whereas Ibsen paraphrased is an intellectual feast. It would be more to the point if Bernard Shaw had said that Shakspere paraphrased is commonplace for all time and that Ibsen paraphrased is commonplace for only the nineteenth century. It would be still more to the point if Bernard Shaw had said that it is quite impossible to paraphrase any work of genius in so far as genius has gone to its making. It is absurd to talk of paraphrasing Shakspere, because Shakspere is of genius all compact; and it is as true of Ibsen as of Shakspere that, so far as he is a genius and not merely a scientific naturalist, it is absurd to separate what he says from his way of saying it. When Shakspere has written:

he has written more than the equivalent of "life is not worth living." If Bernard Shaw will not admit that Shakspere in this passage is no more than an utterer of a universal platitude for pessimists, he will have to agree that Ibsen is no more than an utterer of parochial platitude for the suffragette platform. Probably, however, now that Bernard Shaw has himself become a classical author, he has realized that to distinguish between the ideas of a literary genius and the language in which they are expressed is as absurd as to distinguish between the subject of a painter and the way in which it is painted, or between the themes of a musician and the notes in which they are rendered.

At any rate, Bernard Shaw must realize how very badly he himself would fare under such a distinction. We have seen that Bernard Shaw in doctrine and idea is in no sense original. His celebration of the state is as old as Plato. His particular sort of puritanism is as old as Cromwell. His particular brand of socialism is as old as Owen. A paraphrase of Bernard Shaw—a reduction of Bernard Shaw to the bare bones of his subject matter would be as intolerable as the speeches of his disciples and some of his masters usually are. In a word, if Bernard Shaw is a genius, he is a genius for the same reason that Shakspere is a genius. He is a genius not because he has anything new to say, but because he has a passionate and a personal way of saying it. If I had the time to go deeper into this matter, I should like to ask whether it is really possible to get hold of a new idea as distinguished from a new way of presenting

an old one. But, at all events, I have already said enough to justify the assumption that, if Bernard Shaw can claim an immortality, however brief, it will not be by virtue of his original, novel, and startling opinions, but by virtue of his literary presentation of them in a manner entirely his own. The equations read:

The ideas of Bernard Shaw = the commonplaces of his time.

The ideas of Bernard Shaw + his way of presenting them = G. B. S.